Update: Emmerich and Kloser’s script was purchased by Sony Pictures, it was announced Thursday. The budget for 2012 is said to be near $200 million.

Roland Emmerich, director of spectacle event films like Independence Day, Godzilla and the upcoming 10,000 B.C., is currently in search of a studio to park his latest film, 2012. Apparently this similarly big budget flick has nothing to do with Michael Bay’s project, 2012: The War For Souls, beyond using the Mayan calendar, which indicates bad things coming our way in four years, as inspiration. The script currently being pitched to studios was written by Emmerich and composer-writer Harald Kloser, and, save for a SGA strike, Variety says to expect the movie to hit theaters in 2009. Bay’s film, based on Whitley Strieber’s novel, is currently scheduled on IMDB for 2010.

If this is another Deep Impact vs. Armageddon showdown, it’s less intense, but if anyone’s contracted to blow up the world, it should be Bay in my estimation. Didn’t Emmerich already have his shot with 2004’s terrible The Day After Tomorrow, or was that his ice-apocalypse, while this one will be fire-related? Wikipedia says that dire Mayan-related predictions for 2012 range from super-volcanoes, earthquakes and cosmic rays to a dramatic shift in human consciousness. I predict a Black Eyed Peas reunion and Uwe Boll’s 2013. Random factoid: Some of you will recall that I Am Legend takes place in 2012.

Transformers director Michael Bay says he will probably leave preproduction on a Transformers sequel so that he can work on another film before the big Hollywood strike of 2008.

‘Transformers 2’, well that’s another story. Iching [sic] to work pre-strike (June) so I might jump ship and come back a year or so later cause people at the studio have been dragging for two months. Not sure why. I’ll keep you informed.”

I wonder if this film will be the Disney adaptation of Prince of Persia (which was listed on the pre-strike memo) or 2012: The War for Souls. Bay has also just screened the final IMAX cut of Transformers:

“But I just saw the first IMAX print of ‘Transformers’. Not depressing – freakin AWESOME! They need to bottle the magic of IMAX because it’s the future of cinema. It comes out next Friday the 21st. I added some extra scenes.”

A few months back it was reported that Michael Bay would direct a apocalyptic thriller 2012: The War for Souls, based on the forthcoming book by Whitley Strieber. It has since been reported that Bay will be directing the big screen adaptation of the popular video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Both of the stories have been unconfirmed. And with the success of Transformers, who knows if Bay’s next project won’t be the expected sequel. Our friends at RT sat down with the Transformers scribe to discuss 2012: The War for Souls. Until now we really haven’t had much information on the project other than the apocalyptic Mayan date contained within the title. (The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st 2012. They believed that would be the day the world would end.)

“It’s a book we just set up at Warner Brothers by Whitley Strieber who wrote The Hunger and Wolfen and who’s also a famous alien abductee. It is his latest theory of what’s going to go down in 2012 based on the Mayan calendar and based on factual astronomical convergences are going to happen on that day, said Roberto Orci. “We really like the initial concept. We always try to be extremely free with what the dictates of the live action story need to be. If it ends up being extremely similar to the book, great. But we don’t stick to anything just because it’s there. We question everything.”

Okay, so it still doesn’t look like we have much information. May-be someday. Oh, and my prediction: Bay will direct Prince of Persia for Disney and then do Transformers 2. Those two projects seem more ready for primetime. 2012 sounds mostly like an idea or concept at this point.

According to TMZ, Bay will produce the film adaptation, which he also hopes to direct. Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek XI) are supposedly producing and writing the screenplay adaptation. The 336 page novel is expected in book stores in September 2007.

TMZ Reports:

“Apparently, 2012 will be a big year for planet Earth, at least according to many folk traditions: 2012 is suppossedly to be a year of either great spiritual transformation — or apocalypse. The Mayan calendar held that it would be a time when the existing world order would be reversed. Nostradamus forecasted that a rather large comet would rudely arrive on Earth’s doorstep no later than 2012. The Roman Catholic Saint Malachy predicted that in 2012, the last Pope would arrive, triggering Judgment Day. And in both “The X Files” and amongst certain UFO theorists, 2012 is the year aliens invade Earth. Even regular, non-nutty scientists also speculate that in 2012 a polar reversal will take place on carth, and that once the earth starts rotating in the opposite direction, natural disasters of unknown proportions may occur.”

Sounds very interesting. I’m all for any movie that involves Michael Bay and a lot of special effects filled action sequences.

Did You Know: The Mayan calendar ends on December 21st 2012. They believed that would be the day the world would end.